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what is Governor Orji Doing ? Any semblance of decent society left in Aba, the hitherto commercial nerve centre of South-Eastern Nigeria is gone, as Abia state of Nigeria speedily heads down the road to anarchy.
There is no longer gain-saying the fact that criminals and outlaws now have a comfortable run of the city of Aba. The crime-busters have repeatedly been busted by these hoodlums. While innocent residents of the city are now snapped up at will for ransom, policemen are being freely slain alongside, for fun.

Even the hunters, have now become the hunted in the Enyimba city of Aba. The city has totally gone out of control. And as the audacity of the crime lords of the city increase, they resort to more heart-rending atrocities which as usual go unchallenged.

Photo:Abia State kidnapping Governor Thoedore Orji ? Any realtion of Clifford Orji ?

Nigeria as a nation, on Monday took a nasty shock as fifteen pupils of Abayi International School, Aba, were on Monday morning abducted in their school bus in Aba, Abia State.

The driver of the school bus had picked the children at designated points and was on the way to school when the suspected kidnappers struck. A Toyota Camry saloon car overtook and blocked the bus and men brandishing guns alighted and ordered it to stop.

Huhuonline.com gathered that as soon as the driver came down, the hoodlums collected his cell phone and ordered him to lie face down while they drove off with the pupils towards Etche in neighboring Rivers state of Nigeria. The abducted pupil are said to be within the nursery and primary school age.

Geoffrey Ogbonna, the Abia State Police Command spokesperson had earlier told newsmen that he was yet to get any official report on the incident while it was learnt that the kidnappers had already demanded a N20m ransom.

This sordid assault on decent society is unfortunately coming at a time the Abia State Government just issued a two-week ultimatum to kidnappers and other violent criminals in the state to surrender their weapons and be rehabilitated in an amnesty programme.

This not withstanding, not a few people are of the view that the Abia state government has failed. They argue that a government that cannot give any measure of protection to its tax-payers even its children population has irredeemably failed. One of such groups is the Network on Police Reform in Nigeria (NOPRIN).

The group is alarmed at the dimension that kidnapping and other violent crimes have taken in Abia State and maintains that the police and other security forces have, not just lost control, but have themselves become targets of unrelenting attacks by the hoodlums they are expected to checkmate. This, NOPRIN said is illustrated by daily reports about police officers being gunned down by hoodlums in Aba.

They gave instances with the incident of September 18, 2010 where two policemen were reported to have been shot dead by unknown gunmen at Umuafor Ukwu in Obingwa local government Area, the same area where four journalists and their driver were kidnapped on July 11, 2010.

Recently, also unknown gunmen were reported to have besieged a family in Aba, and ordered two little boys under gun point to have sex with their mother. The first boy, for refusing to comply, was shot dead in the presence of his mother. The poor woman had to prevail on her second son to do the bidding of the hoodlums to save his son’s and her own life. This the group described as sacrilege.

According to a statement signed by Okechukwu Nwanguma, the Program Coordinator of NOPRIN, what is happening in Abia State, is merely a reflection of the quality of leadership in the state. Hear him: “No doubt, criminals have taken over the political space in the Southeast. Some State governors in the Southeast who came to power through a fraudulent electoral process have also hijacked the traditional institution by installing their fellow criminals as traditional rulers. These are the so-called traditional rulers who sponsor kidnapping and shield kidnappers in their communities. There is no political legitimacy. There is no governance. There is no morality. This explains why grown men could kidnap innocent minors for money. This is unconscionable!”

NOPRIN believes that the Abia state governor has completely lost control, either because he is complicit or he is incompetent. The group insists that the purpose of every legitimate government is the welfare and security of the people that any government that cannot protect lives and property is not worth the name.

“What is happening in Abia also portends a serious threat to the forthcoming 2011 general elections. This calls for the immediate and decisive intervention of the federal Government. NOPRIN hereby calls on President Goodluck Jonathan to declare a state of emergency in Abia State. A special security force must be deployed without further delay to smoke out these criminals and their sponsors, and restore public order and safety in Abia State”, Nwanguma said.

In a swift reaction to the kidnap of the children, President Goodluck Jonathan has condemned as utterly callous and cruel, the kidnapping of the 15 nursery and primary school pupils in Aba, the Abia state capital. In a statement signed by Ima Niboro, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, President Jonathan has ordered the Inspector-General of Police and heads of other security agencies to take all necessary steps to rescue the abducted children and return them safely to their parents.

The President urged the parents and relatives of the children to remain calm and assured them that Government will do everything possible to apprehend the kidnappers and bring an end to the lawlessness in Aba, Abia state.

Meanwhile, banks in Aba had shut down since Monday following the security situation in the city and this is the fourth occasion banks in Aba have had to close down within the last two months for fear of armed attacks.

As the feeling of insecurity swells in the state, proprietors of nursery, primary and post-primary schools in the city are gearing up for a protest strike on Thursday with the intention of shutting down all the schools until reasonable measure of security returns to the city.

In a rel.ated development, medical doctors in Aba, under the aegis of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Aba branch, last week shut down both private and public health institutions in the city to protest the murder of one of their colleagues, Dr. Stanley Uche who was allegedly murdered by suspected kidnappers. This came on heel of the kidnap of two medical doctors last Wednesday.

Huhuonline.com gathered that Dr. Uche of Christian Victory Hospital was killed last Monday while he was travelling to his village in Imo state for the burial of his sister.

In a communiqué signed by Dr. Godwin Uwaoma and Dr. Chris Mmachi, Chairman and Secretary of NMA respectively, they observed that no fewer than 20 medical doctors have been kidnapped in recent times regardless of the October 7 Amnesty deadline for kidnappers and other armed criminals in the state.

LONDON – BP's embattled Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward will be replaced by American Robert Dudley on Oct. 1, the company said Tuesday, as it reported a record quarterly loss and set aside $32.2 billion to cover the costs of the devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

BP said the decision to replace Hayward, 53, was made by mutual agreement. In a mark of faith in its outgoing leader, the company said it planned to recommend him for a non-executive board position at its Russian joint venture and will pay him 1.045 million pounds ($1.6 million), a year's salary, in lieu of notice..

"The BP board is deeply saddened to lose a CEO whose success over some three years in driving the performance of the company was so widely and deservedly admired," BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said in a statement accompanying the quarterly earnings update.

Svanberg said the April 20 explosion of the Macondo well on the Deepwater Horizon platform run by BP in the Gulf of Mexico has been a "watershed incident" for the company.

"BP remains a strong business with fine assets, excellent people and a vital role to play in meeting the world's energy needs," he said. "But it will be a different company going forward, requiring fresh leadership supported by robust governance and a very engaged board."

Hayward, who has a Ph.D in geology, had been a well-regarded chief executive. But his promise when he took the job in 2007 to focus "like a laser" on safety came back to haunt him after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and unleashed a deep-sea gusher of oil.

He became the lightning rod for anti-BP feeling in the United States and didn't help matters with a series of gaffes, raising hackles by saying "I want my life back," going sailing, and what was viewed as an evasive performance before U.S. congressmen in June.

On top of the $1.6 million payout, Hayward retains his rights to shares under a long-term performance program which could eventually be worth several million pounds if BP's share price recovers. The stock has lost around 40 percent since the well explosion.

Hayward, who will remain on the board until Nov. 30, will also be entitled to draw an annual pension of 600,000 pounds from a pension pot valued at around 11 million pounds.

Svanberg described Dudley, 54, who was thrown out of Russia after a battle with shareholders in the company's TNK-BP joint venture, as a "robust operator in the toughest circumstances."

Currently BP's managing director, Dudley grew up partly in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and has so far avoided any public missteps. He spent 20 years at Amoco Corp., which merged with BP in 1998, and lost out to Hayward on the CEO slot three years ago.

Dudley will be based in London when he takes up his appointment and will hand over his present duties in the United States to Lamar McKay, the chairman and president of BP America.

BP said that the $32.2 billion charge for the cost of the spill led it to record a loss of $17 billion for the second quarter. The charge includes the $20 billion compensation fund the company set up following pressure from President Barack Obama as well as costs to date of $2.9 billion.

But the company also stressed its strong underlying financial position — revenue for the quarter was up 34 percent at $75.8 billion — and Hayward said it had reached a "significant milestone" with the capping of the leaking well.

Crews were restarting work to plug the leaky Gulf well after the remnants of Tropical Storm Bonnie blew through, forcing a short evacuation. The U.S. government's oil spill chief, Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, said Monday that the so-called static kill — in which mud and cement are blasted in from the top of the well — should start Aug. 2.

If all goes well, the final stage — in which mud and cement are blasted in from deep underground — should begin Aug. 7.

BP said the bottom kill could take days or weeks, depending on how well the static kill works, meaning it will be mid-August before the well is plugged for good.

Hayward said the company expects to pay the "substantial majority" of the remaining direct spill response costs by the end of the year.

"Other costs are likely to be spread over a number of years, including any fines and penalties, longer-term remediation, compensation and litigation costs," Hayward said.

BP said it planned to tell analysts in an update later Tuesday that it will sell assets for up to $30 billion over the next 18 months, "primarily in the upstream business, and selected on the basis that they are worth more to other companies than to BP."

That would leave the company with a smaller, but higher quality Exploration & Production business, it said.

The company reported that underlying replacement cost profit — the measure most closely watched by analysts — was $5 billion for the three months between April and June when adjusted for one-off items and accounting effects. That compared favorably with a $2.9 billion profit for the second quarter of 2009.

"Outside the Gulf it is very encouraging that BP's global business has delivered another strong underlying performance, which means that the company is in robust shape to meet its responsibilities in dealing with the human tragedy and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico," Hayward said.

Higher prices for oil and gas made up for slightly lower output and a loss in gas marketing and trading in Exploration & Production, while Refining & Marketing reported increased profits as a result of strong performance in the fuels value chains and the lubricants and petrochemicals businesses.

The company said it planned to reduce its net debt level down to a range of $10-$15 billion within the next 18 months, compared to net debt of $23 billion at the end of June, to ensure that it had the flexibility to meet its future financial obligations.

Capital spending for 2010 and 2011 will be about $18 billion a year, in line with previous forecasts.